Authors: Jörgen Pettersson & Sascha Düerkop
Åland – Birthplace of Nordic women’s football
The Åland Islands are an archipelago of almost 7.000 islands roughly halfway between Sweden and Finland. While the majority of the 30.000 inhabitants speak Swedish, the islands are an autonomous part of the Republic of Finland. They are often acknowledged as hosting the first women’s international football match in Scandinavia, between Finland and Sweden, in 1973. However, this is only a small part of its football history. A story in which Åland actually may lay a larger claim to that “first” themselves.
First organised steps
On the 20th of May 1971, Ascension Day, a historic moment took place in Mariehamn, the capital of the Åland Islands: IFK Mariehamn and Hammarlands IK, two clubs from the main island of the archipelago, organised a women’s football match in the Central Sport Arena. The match was a curtain raiser for a men’s game between the same two clubs and attracted 1,100 spectators, an astonishing crowd in a city that has a population just ten times as big. IFK won the match, while the exact score is unrecorded. That match was historic, as it is the first known women’s football match on the archipelago. It was a long-planned match that followed an entire summer of training, as several clubs from the islands decided to start women’s football programs.
That Åland’s clubs decided to set-up women’s teams was not an official initiative, but rather addressed a growing demand of the women on the islands. In the 1960s and 1970s, women’s football slowly gained ground in both Sweden and Finland and thus Ålanders increasingly demanded access to the sport as well. The players-to-be approached clubs, seeking for teams or at least training times. Some clubs did indeed open their doors, while others were cautious or hesitant. Many of the clubs at the time worried that women’s football programs might draw resources away from the men’s programs.
A few of the (male) leaders in Åland’s sports associations, however, were supportive from an early stage. Folke Woivalin and Janke Sundberg, for example, recognised that equality in sport was inevitable and ensured that women’s football moved beyond mere tolerance to gain an organisational football with the previously all-male Football Association (Ålands Fotbollförbund, ÅFF).
Regular competition – on and off the islands
The first match was followed by a local league, the inaugural season held in 1971. Just a y